Establishing a business that can thrive even when you can’t be fully present is an life essential in my opinion.

Although we can never fully prepare for major life-changing events. There are definitely ways to prepare your business for times when your energy is low or you you have less time. If I could do it again I would take the following steps:

1. Build a strong personal brand

If you want to be successful in the online space, a personal brand is essential. Whether you are a coach, content creator, artist or photographer or writer. It doesn’t matter. Your profile is your online business card. To get clients or start collaborations.
Who you are online, how you present yourself and the skillset you have is important. And this will only become more important in the future.

2. Move away from a service based business or turn your skillset into passive or a scalable income

Although I think it is a very good way to start, build experience, and start from “the bottom.” But in the longer term, a service-based business is not the very best choice. The skills you build with it are. If you can turn that into a passive or scalable income then you can really start to grow.

3. Creating learning goals to develop soft skills

Yes, it’s about skills again. Making learning goals through which you develop your skillset is a very important one. Looking back at the past year, my biggest shortcoming has been not being able to cope with the massive changes. That has caused overwhelm.

Now I think you can never prepare for parenthood. Still, it could have been easier.

4. Making sure not having to work for 6 months after giving birth and being able to work at a slower pace for 9-12 months.

The standard (in most countries) of maternity leave is 3 months. Which in my opinion is far too short.

In a human life, we experience a birth 1,2 sometimes 3 times (and some people more often). But those are relatively very short periods in a human life. How valuable it would be for mother, child and the family to get used to life together at their own pace. For the short and longer term.

5. Asking for help when it’s needed

And this one is always important. But help from friends and family is so important. People are not made to do parenthood alone: “it takes a village to raise a child.”.

We prepare for pregnancy, for birth, but after that we usually let things take their natural course. From a business perspective, it’s normal to build a financial buffer. But wouldn’t it be much better if, you had a business that just kept running—even without your direct 1-1 time?